House of Leaves

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Johnny Truant wild and troubled sometime employee in a LA tattoo parlour, finds a notebook kept by Zampano, a reclusive old man found dead in a cluttered apartment. Herein is the heavily annotated story of the Navidson Report. Will Navidson, a photojournalist, and his family move into a new house. What happens next is recorded on videotapes and in ...Read MoreJohnny Truant wild and troubled sometime employee in a LA tattoo parlour, finds a notebook kept by Zampano, a reclusive old man found dead in a cluttered apartment. Herein is the heavily annotated story of the Navidson Report. Will Navidson, a photojournalist, and his family move into a new house. What happens next is recorded on videotapes and in interviews. Now the Navidsons are household names. Zampano, writing on loose sheets, stained napkins, crammed notebooks, has compiled what must be the definitive work on the events on Ash Tree Lane. But Johnny Truant has never heard of the Navidson Record. Nor has anyone else he knows. And the more he reads about Will Navidson's house, the more frightened he becomes. Paranoia besets him. The worst part is that he can't just dismiss the notebook as the ramblings of a crazy old man. He's starting to notice things changing around him ...Immensely imaginative. Impossible to put down. Impossible to forget. House of Leaves is thrilling, terrifying and unlike anything you have ever read before.Read Less

Customer Reviews

I couldn't agree more

God it's like this guy purposely drags you through hell with the promise of a great book but little to nothing is achieved at the end. Clearly a novice author who had a great idea but ended up killing it over and over again by adding in TONS of useless footnotes that you cant help but read in order to feel like your not selling the book short. And what the hell is with the overly articulate text, I wanted to crack my skull half way through because you seriously need a dictionary to sift through all of the abstract artsy wannabe intellectual bs, My lord, save yourself the frustration

sarahkatherine

Sep 24, 2008

bigger on the outside than the inside

too much style, too little substance. the story of the house lured me in and propelled me through to the conclusion but most of the book was filler. the excessive footnotes were distracting and annoying and added little or nothing at all to the story. as i was having to turn the book upside down and sideways and very nearly bending over backwards to read some pages, i pictured danielewski grinning with delight at the headache and neck strain he'd caused me on account of his being so gosh darn clever! all of this over-complication and assault of useless words made me grow more and more detached from the plot and the characters until i just wanted the book to end. my irritation level elevated to the point that i was even annoyed by the pages with almost NO WORDS. "waste of trees" comes to mind. i appreciate the effort that it took to do something different but not the effort that it required to drudge through most of it. i would recommend reading "tom's story" and "the three attic whalestoe institute letters" and then picking up a new book.

topazsfp

Feb 7, 2008

Amazingly detailed, suspenseful and compelling

This is one of the few books that I consistently recommend to people. It frightened me more than anything Stephen King's ever put out, as well as sparking some fascinating discussion between my friends and me about madness, reality and perception. Basically, it's a book about a documentary that was never made, about a house that doesn't exist. This book plays with your mind, plays with language, and plays with conventions to create an extremely unconventional - and strangely compelling - novel. Highly recommended.

Rubycanary

Dec 27, 2007

Great Gift

I was given this book as a gift (on a third date none-the-less), and have since given it to many people.

That relationship didn't last ( I don't recommend giving a horror novel to someone as a first present), but it is a great present, especially for men that may be hard to find books for.

Like nothing I have ever read, or seen again, I thought this book was like a literary horror. Not too gross to be read before bed, but enough to make you double check the lock. A young man with not much direction, and too many women, in his life finds a trunk left by a strange old man. As he unravels the contents of the box, he gets sucked into the story it contains, and begins to loose his mind. Filled with footnotes, strange text, and directions that send you searching throughout the book for the next link in the story lines, it is as entertaining to read as any book I've come across.

Ohrenberg

Oct 17, 2007

Original

House of Leaves will haunt you long after you have finished it. The author blends 3 stories together in a way that draws you into the book. By the end of the novel it feels more like an experience then a novel. House of leaves proves that Danielewski is very talented.

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